Alienne Mine:A Prequel to Dragon Dawn

For a wonderful multitude, the CR Sisters, especially two of my fellow authors, Dottie Taylor/Lillie J. Roberts and Joanna Lloyd. Thank you for your help with Alienne Mine and for your friendship.

And a special note for the other members of that marvelous and caring group, who mean the world to me. You are my comrades-in-arms against the caprice of the publishing world, my steadfast band of Sisters.

~Deborah O’Neill Cordes

Preface

This prequel to Dragon Dawn, Book One of the Dinosaurian Time Travel Series, mostly takes place in the Dragon Dawn human universe before the first manned landing on Mars in A.D. 2029. With the exception of brief appearances by Gus Granberg, the Dragon Dawn cast of characters is missing, for I chose to explore this story from two new and different points of view, that of a sentient being from a far-flung galaxy, Alienne, and her Chosen, a human astronaut named Edward McAdams.

I crafted this prequel as a stand-alone work, so that it can be read either before Dragon Dawn or afterward. Please stay tuned for the next novel in my series, titled Dawn of Time, to learn the fates of the characters from Alienne Mine and Dragon Dawn as they join forces to grapple with conflict and find love in two universes, one human and the other dinosaurian.

Best wishes, Deborah.

Ye Gods! Annihilate but space and time,

And make two lovers happy.

Alexander Pope, Peri Bathous

PART ONE

Chapter 1

For she had eyes and chose me.

~ William Shakespeare, Othello

A.D. 2022

He was a man of science, yet things beyond his ken could still raise shivers along his spine.

Edward McAdams felt someone’s gaze on him, despite the fact he alone manned the asteroid station. Get a grip, he told himself as he tried to shake off his paranoia.

His fellow astronauts had left a few hours before to explore the asteroid’s cave system. He planned to occupy himself by crunching numbers, comparing the mineral ratios of test samples retrieved from different locations on the asteroid.

As he worked the weird feeling of being watched persisted. For the most part, such feelings were rare. Sure, everyone experienced it occasionally in outer space, the sensation of being alone, yet not alone. Some said it was caused by being closer to a watchful God in heaven, but he didn’t believe in such things. Stuff and nonsense. Space paranoia came with the territory.

Let it go, he told himself.

Ed looked at his watch. 0:1047. The other astronauts would return at 0:1700, or as near to that as possible. He’d be manning the com-link for another six hours.

His stomach rumbled. Lunch time. He rose and headed for the galley, but stopped when he reached the port window, his gaze riveted to the Earth. The pull of home was tangible, something felt by virtually everyone who traveled to outer space. The planet appeared to float just beyond the window, serene in the velvet dark. A half orb now, mostly blue and white, with the continents of the southern hemisphere showing as swaths of brown. The asteroid took an elliptical path around Earth, its present location nearly twice the distance to the Moon.

Ed watched the Earth a moment longer, then went to the galley to brew some coffee. That’s when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

He swiveled and stared. What the hell?

* * *

She’d shadowed humans since 1969, when she followed them to the Moon. The Apollo astronauts saw her spacecraft and reported it to Mission Control, but this was little known among the rest of humanity, even though some of the crew members revealed strange UFO sightings in the decades following the moon missions.

She’d waited many of their Earth years before deciding to make contact. This human would be the first, because he intrigued her. He was a mechanical engineer and highly intelligent, something she could discern with her ultraviolet vision, for the aura surrounding him whirled and sparkled with silver light. His aura was tinged with violet-gold, too, the color combination one she’d never seen before.

In her many years of observation, she’d gotten used to the basic physical appearance of humans, similar to her species in size and overall body plan, but boring for the lack of variety in their skin and hair colors. Although this man had the usual monochromatic flesh tone and medium-brown hair, she nevertheless found him compelling, not only because of his aura, but also because his irises sparkled with life. They were a deep violet-blue, not the milky hues of his home world as seen from space, but the bright color of new stars.